Across the country, Americans’ expectations of speedy service and easy access to consumer products have been crushed like a Styrofoam container in a trash compactor.
Time for some new, more realistic expectations.
Fast food is
less fast. A huge flotilla of container ships is
stuck offshore in California, waiting to unload. Shelves normally
stocked with Halloween candy this time of year are empty, as I saw the other day at a Target here in Ann Arbor, Mich.
The issue has become so troublesome — with alarming economic and political ramifications — that the White House is
stepping in, urging unions, port operators and big consumer-goods companies to work around the clock (if they aren’t already) to unclog supply pipelines.
American consumers, their expectations pampered and catered to for decades, are not accustomed to inconvenience.
“For generations, American shoppers have been trained to be nightmares,” Amanda Mull
wrote in August in the Atlantic
, before the supply chain problem turned truly ugly. “The pandemic has shown just how desperately the consumer class clings to the feeling of being served.”
Customers’ persistent whine, “Why don’t they just hire more people?,” sounds feeble in this era of
the Great Resignation, especially in industries, such as food service, with reputations for being
tough places to work.
Rather than living constantly on the verge of throwing a fit, and risking taking it out on overwhelmed servers, struggling shop owners or late-arriving delivery people,
we’d do ourselves a favor by consciously lowering expectations.
